Lord SELBORNE was one of three heirs to peerages who a generation ago banded themselves together to resist elevation to the House of Lords.  Another of them is Lord CURZON, who answered him to-night, and whose contempt for the Chamber which he now adorns seems to have grown with the years that he has spent in it.  Reading between the lines of his speech a cynic could only infer that the Upper House, as at present constituted, is such a useless and superfluous assembly that it does not much matter who gets into it or by what venal ladder he climbs.

The only peers who ventured to get to close quarters with the scandal were Lord KNUTSFORD, who told a moving tale of how a potential baronet diverted L25,000 from the London Hospital to a certain party fund, and thereby achieved his purpose; and Lord SALISBURY, who declared from his knowledge of Prime Ministers that they were sick of administering the system of which Lord CURZON was so ostentatiously ignorant.

[Illustration:  WINSTON’S GIFT TO HIS NEW PRIVATE SECRETARY, MR. MACCALLUM SCOTT.]

Many reasons have been assigned for Mr. CHURCHILL’S reinclusion in the Ministry, but I am inclined to think that the real one has only just been discovered.  Mr. MACCALLUM SCOTT is one of the most pertinacious inquisitors of the Treasury Bench; he is also a whole-souled admirer of the Member for DUNDEE, and has written a book in eulogy of his achievements by sea and land.  Mr. CHURCHILL has rewarded this devotion by appointing Mr. SCOTT his private secretary, and, as it is contrary to Parliamentary etiquette for a Member holding this position to interrogate other Ministers, has thereby conferred a distinct benefit upon his new colleagues.  Mr. LLOYD GEORGE is now reported to be on the look-out for other statesmen in whom Mr. HOGGE and Mr. PRINGLE repose a similar trust, but so far without success; and it is thought that his only chance is to make Mr. PRINGLE an Under-Secretary on condition that he takes Mr. HOGGE as his ame damnee, or vice versa.

Wednesday, August 8th.—­Lord BURNHAM shocked some of the more ancient peers by his skittish references to the coming Conference on the Second Chamber.  When he expressed the hope that Lord CURZON would make an explicit statement, on the ground that their Lordships’ House was in no need of a soporific, I fully expected one of the occupants of the mausoleum to rise and reprove him in the words of Dr. JOHNSON, “Sir, in order to be facetious it is not necessary to be indecent.”

The advent of the feminine lawyer was rendered a little nearer when her champions successfully held up a Bill promoted by the Incorporated Law Society until the Government undertook to find time for the discussion of a measure enabling women to become solicitors.  Already Shylock is trembling at the prospect.